All posts tagged ‘Scott Westerfeld’

I’ve already mentioned how addicted I’ve become to listening to audiobooks in the car. One book that really grabbed me was Leviathan, the first book in an alternate reality YA trilogy by Scott Westerfeld. Narrated by the terrific Alan Cumming, I became swept up in this story of an alternate World War I Europe, in which the Allies have developed a biology-based technology that uses animals as machines, while the Central Powers rely on biomimetic machines that look like animals. On the Darwinist side (for it is Darwin who discovers the secret of engineering DNA), Deryn Sharp is a 15-year-old girl disguised as a boy so that she can serve in the British Air Service. Her life becomes entwined with Prince Aleksander of Hohenberg, son of the Austrian Archduke whose assassination sets off the war. Alek is hiding from German forces hoping to wipe out his claim to the throne. How these two meet, tangle, and save the airship Leviathan in the Alps makes for thrilling reading. But Westerfeld’s world-building is also exhaustive, including animal-based weaponry and tools of every kind, from strafing hawks to message lizards, and on the other side enormous mechanical walkers and other diesel-driven wonderments.

The second book in the trilogy, Behemoth, is no less engrossing. The Leviathan flies into Istanbul, where Dr. Barlow — the real-life geneticist and granddaughter of Darwin himself — is on a mysterious mission to keep the Ottoman Empire out of the war. It involves Behemoth, an underwater fabricated animal used by the British military. Deryn and Alek each end up unexpectedly hiding out in Istanbul, where they become involved with revolutionaries who patrol the city’s alleys and byways in walkers based on mythological giants from the empire’s various cultures. Alek and Deryn again save the day without managing to reveal Deryn’s secret identity.

Book three in the series, Goliath, takes our heroes from the Old World to the New. The Leviathan heads to Japan, stopping to pick up a mad scientist studying the devastation of a forest in Siberia. The man, of course, is none other than Nikola Tesla, the Serbian-born electrical engineer and real-life inventor of AC current, the remote control, and the radio. Tesla sends the Leviathan back to his adopted homeland of America to use his discoveries in Siberia to perfect his massive weaponized Tesla Coil, Goliath.

The appeal of the Leviathan series is not purely in its action-filled plot by any means. His characters, and especially their dialogue, suck you into the story. All of that is helped (for the most part) by Cumming’s delivery. Between listenings I found myself particularly anxious to get back to hear Cumming pronounce the Scottish Deryn’s colorful phrases and sayings — the “lady boffin” (Dr. Barlow), the “wee beasties” — and her near-curses (“Barking frogs!” “Blisters!”). While there were one or two characters that struck me as not quite right — the lady boffin sounded too much like Margaret Dumont for my taste, and Tesla’s accent too closely resembled that of Borat — for the most part they were dead-on.

As someone who doesn’t read an enormous amount of YA, I have to say that I was completely impressed. Leviathan is as rewarding as any fiction I could hope to read. And as an audiobook it couldn’t be beat. I heartily recommend Scott Westerfeld’s trilogy for anyone looking for their next good read.

A copy of Goliath was provided by Simon & Schuster Audio for review purposes.